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Arthur Wightman

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Nationality
  
U.S.

Role
  
Physicist


Name
  
Arthur Wightman

Fields
  
Physicist


Born
  
March 30, 1922Rochester, New York (
1922-03-30
)

Institutions
  
Yale University (1943-44)Princeton University (1949-71)

Alma mater
  
Yale University (B.A., 1942)Princeton University (Ph.D, 1949)

Doctoral students
  
Eduard PrugoveckiArthur JaffeOscar E. Lanford IIIBarry SimonAlan SokalRafael de la LlaveStephen FullingJerrold Marsden

Known for
  
Quantum field theoryWightman axioms

Died
  
January 13, 2013, Princeton, New Jersey, United States

Books
  
Troubles in the External Field Problem for Invariant Wave Equations: Lectures

Notable awards
  
Similar People
  
John Archibald Wheeler, Eugene Wigner, Jerrold E Marsden, Jagdish Mehra, Alvin M Weinberg

Doctoral advisor
  
John Archibald Wheeler

Arthur wightman pwc


Arthur Strong Wightman (March 30, 1922 – January 13, 2013) was an American mathematical physicist. He was one of the founders of the axiomatic approach to quantum field theory, and originated the set of Wightman axioms.

Contents

Arthur Wightman


Biography

Advised by John Wheeler, Wightman's 1949 Princeton doctoral dissertation was entitled The Moderation and Absorption of Negative Pions in Hydrogen. His graduate students include Arthur Jaffe, Jerrold Marsden, and Alan Sokal. His work is summarized in the classic concise monograph PCT, Spin and statistics and all that written with R. F. Streater. Its title is a play on 1066 and All That, the historical satire by Sellar and Yeatman. The PCT refers to the combined symmetry of a quantum field theory under P Parity, C charge and T time. Spin and statistics refers to the fact that in quantum field theory it can be proved that spin 1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics whereas integer spin 0, 1, 2 particles obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

Wightman was awarded the Henri Poincaré Prize of the International Association of Mathematical Physics in 1997. Until his death, he was a professor emeritus at Princeton.

Works

  • R. F. Streater and Arthur Wightman: PCT, spin and statistics, and all that, Princeton University Press 2000 (1st edn., New York, Benjamin 1964)
  • Arthur Wightman: Quantum field theory in terms of vacuum expectation values. In: Physical Review. vol. 101, 1956, p. 860
  • Arthur Wightman and Lars Gårding: Fields as operator-valued distributions in relativistic quantum theory. In: Arkiv för Fysik. vol. 28, 1965, pp. 129–184
  • Arthur Wightman: What is the point of so-called "axiomatic field theory"?. In: Physics Today. September 1969
  • Arthur Wightman Introduction to some aspects of the relativistic dynamics of quantized fields, in Maurice Lévy (ed.) High energy electromagnetic interactions and field theory, Cargèse Summer School 1964, Gordon and Breach, New York 1967
  • Arthur Wightman: Should we believe in Quantum Field Theory?. In: Zichichi (ed.): The Whys of subnuclear physics. In: Ettore Majorana Course. vol. 19, 1975, p. 983
  • Arthur Wightman, Wick and Wigner: Intrinsic parity of elementary particles. In: Physical Review. vol. 88, 1952, p. 101
  • Arthur Wightman: Looking back at Quantum Field Theory. In: physica scripta. vol. 24, 1981, p. 813
  • Res Jost: To Arthur Wightman. In: Communications in mathematical physics. vol. 132, 1990, p. 1
  • Arthur Wightman:The theory of quantized fields in the 50s, in Brown, Dresden, Hoddeson (eds.) Pions to quarks: particle physics in the 50s, Cambridge University Press 1989
  • References

    Arthur Wightman Wikipedia


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